The present invention relates to a mount for a pinhole lens camera and, more particularly, to an improved wall or cabinet mount which provides for greater ease, speed and accuracy of installation of the mount while allowing for rapid and accurate pointing of the camera axis.
Pinhole lens cameras are used extensively by governmental authorities during undercover investigations or in investigations which must be conducted secretly or unobtrusively. Typically, a small hole is drilled through a wall or cabinet. The lens of a pinhole lens camera has the entrance pupil in front of the lens rather than inside the lens, thus allowing for positioning the pupil at a hole without loss of optical aperture or field of view except as the hole limits the aperture. Walls for which the present invention is applicable may be up to 1/8-inch thick, and can take the form of a cabinet, a thin wall or an electrical box. If the mount is to be used on a thicker wall as, for example, 1/2-inch gypsum drywall, the wall section for the mount must be thinned to 1/8-inch.
Mounts designed especially for pinhole lens cameras, as regards the desired conditions of positioning the lens entrance pupil at the wall aperture, and to speak more rigorously, positioning at the opening of the wall aperture into the viewed space, and maintenance of this position during camera pointing adjustment, have not existed prior to this invention. Various holding arrangements have been employed which lack a positive positioning scheme, or even design consideration of the precise location of the entrance pupil. Pointing is usually restricted to the perpendicular direction to the wall, and pointing by rotation of the optical axis about a point in the wall aperture, which is the acceptable scheme, has not been employed. Failure to incorporate these design considerations in pinhole lens camera mounts has lead to loss of optical aperture due to misalignment of pupil and hole in the initial or the adjusted installation of the camera, and tedium in applying angular adjustment without altering the positional adjustment.